AUDIT QUALITY AND GOING CONCERN OF LISTED CONSUMER GOODS COMPANIES IN NIGERIA

The global financial scandal poses great challenge to the veracity, credibility, utility or value relevance of the audit function. The consequence of poor external audit in most cases manifest in financial scandals and failure of companies. The main objective of this study was to examine the effect of audit quality on going concern of listed consumer goods companies in Nigeria. The independent variable, audit quality was proxied by audit independence, audit firm size and audit firm tenure while the dependent variable, going concern was measured using Alman’s Z score. The population of the study comprised the 21consumer goods companies listed on the Nigerian Exchange Group. The research design adopted for this study was ex post facto, secondary data were used and the sample size of 19 was purposively selected. The hypotheses of the study were tested using pool ordinary least square regression technique and the statistical package employed was STATA 16. The findings of the study revealed that audit independence has a significant positive effect on going concern of listed consumer goods companies in Nigeria; audit firm size has a significant positive effect on going concern of listed consumer goods companies in Nigeria; audit tenure has a significant positive effect on going concern of listed consumer goods companies in Nigeria. Thus, it was concluded that audit quality has significant effect on going concern status of listed consumer goods companies by increasing the likelihood of early detection and mitigation of risks to the company's going concern status. Based on these findings, it was recommended among others that the management of consumer goods companies should engage larger audit firms to benefit from their extensive resources and expertise, particularly when there are complex financial reporting issues.